Bioshock Initial Impressions
I'd heard of the game Bioshock plenty of times when I was growing up, but I didn't know anything about it - apart from seeing the promotional art with big diving suit robots. Recently I started playing the horror game Soma, and when looking at reviews of that game online I saw it mentioned that Bioshock was a game with similar themes. Both games were apparently inspired by a much older game called System Shock 2. I saw it described that Bioshock was System Shock if it went entirely down the first person shooter route, and Soma was the entirely story-based route.
I am loving Soma, so this comparison piqued my interest enough that I thought I should definitely give Bioshock a try. I recently bought an Xbox, so I checked if it was on gamepass (I'm finding gamepass absolutely amazing for discovering dozens of older games I never got around to playing growing up). Unfortunately the game wasn't on gamepass, but the Bioshock remastered collection was on a gamepass deal for £8, which I thought was a great offer. It includes Bioshock 1 & 2 remasters with all DLC, and Bioshock Infinite. (People's opinions seem to be split on whether Bioshock Infinite is a good game or not, it took the game in quite a different direction and some people seem to argue that it killed the series. I'm eager to get around to playing it so that I can form my own opinion though).
Anyway, I launched into Bioshock knowing basically nothing about it. The opening to the game is kind of daft, you are a victim of a plane crash and end up in the ocean. You find a building in the middle of the sea with a lift inside, and take a ride down. You then end up in this magical underground city called rapture and pick up some weapons and start taking orders from this random guy on the radio called Atlas and just start shooting everyone in the city, no questions asked.
Slightly sketchy establishing story aside, one you actually get into the game it has a really nice flow. You are equiped with some guns and a set of magical abilities called plasmids. The game has been perfectly engineered so that you have to use both the guns and plasmids if you want to keep your head above water. At some points I neglected my plasmids and treated the game like an FPS, and soon found that I had depleted all of my money and ammo. There are plasmids that do damange to enemies, and plasmids that stun enemies and make them take more damage. So to conserve ammo it's essential that you mix both guns and plasmids.
The control system is well thought out, one set of triggers + bumpers are for guns and the other is for plasmids, there is a nice left and right symmetry. Switching between guns and plasmids has a nice flow to it because of this. Looting enemies is done with a single button, and even though you can pick up items there is no inventory system, items either appear with counters on the screen or are seen only when you need them when using vending machines around the map. I actually love this, because it keeps the game simple and means you're not constantly in a pause state checking items in your inventory. The game has a really beautiful flow to it.
The "bosses" of the game are Big Daddies, the giant diving suit creatures that are each protecting a girl, called the little sisters. The little sisters are possessed by something, and roam around extracting "Adam" from dead bodies, some kind of biological element that is used as currency for purchasing plasmids. You need to get to the little sisters to get Adam from them, but to do that you have to kill the Big Daddy protecting them first. However, the Big Daddies are not actually hostile until you attack them, they just roam the levels protecting their girls.
This creates a really interesting boss mechanism. Each level will have 1-3 boss fights (Big Daddies that you need to kill), but you choose when and where you want to engage with these fights. In the meantime, you can just run around completing the objectives for the map. This is again another mechanism that makes the game flow super nicely. If you don't have enough health or ammo, or just don't feel like engaging in a boss fight, you can walk past the Big Daddies and come back to them another time. The fights that you pick are all on your own terms. You can even choose to skip fighting the Big Daddies entirely, but the game strongly warns you that doing so will heavily hinder your ability to progress, as you need adam from the little sisters to purchase plasmids and perks that help you out massively.
The game has a retro art deco theme, along with underwater elements. The enemies are rather theatrical and excentric. It's very cosy overall theme, and even though you are alone underwater which a bunch of possessed people trying to kill you, the art style and atmosphere somehow makes the atmosphere very warm and comforting. There is one beautiful part in the game where you are in a theatre area - the lights dim, soothing classical music starts playing and a wave of wall-climbing enemies are released that you have to dodge around and kill, it feels like a dance.
I believe I'm about half way through the game at this point, and I'm loving it so far. I think Bioshock is within my top 3 favourite games already, although I'll have to hold out and see what the end of the game is like.